Find Any File (FAF‪)‬ 4+

FAF throws off some useful metadata and data structures in plain-text which you can tinker with using command-line tools. You can order the columns with a click. I think I remember wondering a few weeks or so ago how it would be cool if it was possible to send to a text file, via the app's menu options, the results of each column seperately or in combinations in whatever sorted order the GUI was displaying. That is, do this in addition to the two default plain-tex output files FAF already makes available post find-op.

I recall how much tags sucked for so long with macosx it has been pleasant to experience the vastly improved tag handling now that I've returned to the macos fold. FAF does a decent job here too. The tag searches are so blazing fast it makes my eyes water! Gotta wear goggles! Anyway, their worth the trouble now to use something like the "tag" command (homebrew?) to make batch assignments so when you need to find your tagged categories again FAF will scream. Let's face it, tools like fzf (fuzzy completion) are cool (you already know how to use if you noticed Spotlight zips if you just give it the first letter of each word in the string you seek ...), but sometimes you really appreciate a solid/smart GUI design that also supplies enough plain-text output to be useful.

Verdict: I'd buy it again.

There are times when one wants to find a file anywhere on a disk. Find Any File makes this very easy and quick.

For example, as I’ve migrated from machine to machine sometimes there are little helper apps, or files in non user spaces that have hung around long past their useful life. I noticed on my new Macbook Pro the fans were not operating correctly. Years ago when I put an SSD in my iMac I purchased a fan control program to make sure the device stayed cool as the SSD was a non standard apple component. When I moved to a Macbook Pro I had long forgotten about that utility….until I noticed one of the fans wasn’t operating correctly. After a little research I remembered the old program, but couldn’t remember the name, so I searched for the word “Fan” with Find any file. The components came up, I recognized them for what they were and deleted them. Problem solved.

I use Find any File on all my machines, I don’t use it very often, but when I do, it saves me time and pain over and over and over again.

If you need to find system or hidden files like configuration files - stuff that could be anywhere - then you need this app! It means what it's name says. And when it finds your file you can perform on it most anything that Finder offers. I don't know what took me so long to find this app. I have been looking for years.
My wife recently asked me to find a file somewhere on our network (with Windows machines) with an "html" extension. She didn't know the filename. I thought, "This will be a great test for FAF. I did a network search.
It returned about 6,000 results in no time at all. And the result screen, which I didn't know if I liked at first, is pure genius. It is a tree view that showed a hierarchical path to every folder containing "html" files. Having some idea what the file's general path might be, I was able to scroll thru the results in a matter of minutes, and locate the file.
Thanks, FAF!